The sale was due to be completed for £560m. The acquisition is intended to marry Autonomy's strength in enterprise search with Interwoven's skills in web-content management. The combined customer base is more than 20,000.

Autonomy immediately went to work when it said that on Thursday it would be ready to announce its first product that would integrate software from the two companies. However, the company would not release any details ahead of time.

As a result of the acquisition, Anthony Bettencourt, who formerly was chief executive of Verity when it was bought by Autonomy, will be chief executive of the Interwoven part of the joint company, Autonomy Interwoven.

Joe Cowan, who was chief executive of Interwoven, will now be part of the group management working for Dr Michael Lynch, OBE, Autonomy's founder and chief executive.

Lynch commented that, "with the addition of Interwoven to the Autonomy group, the intelligence of Autonomy's Idol technology can be used to extend Interwoven's web content capabilities across 100,000 corporate websites, intranets and extranets already powered by Interwoven".

Autonomy's Idol software is one element of Autonomy's plans to expand its market share of the regulatory, legal and compliance market. Idol, or 'intelligent data operating layer', is part of Autonomy's infrastructure software, which helps organisations automate the analysis of their information.